UGA's centralized website hosting platform will be transtioning from Omni CMS to a hosted WordPress-based platform provided by Kaptiv8 Marketing and managed by the EITS Website Services team. This transition will begin this calendar year and conclude in 2025. No new OmniCMS websites will be created after October 2, 2023. 

Centralized WordPress Hosting

For colleges, units and departments at the University of Georgia looking for a Content Management System (CMS), EITS offers Centralized WordPress Hosting.

WordPress is among the world’s most popular website creation platforms. It allows clients without any coding experience to manage their website, create and update pages, and add or change access for other users. WordPress also features easy to use editing tools for content creators and offers extendable functionality through the use of approved plug-ins.

Centralized WordPress is available to qualifying UGA colleges, units and departments. Clients pay necessary costs via passthrough billing to Kaptiv8 Marketing, who maintains access and manages hosting of your WordPress website via WPEngine. EITS provides on-going training and support for users and administrators at no additional cost.

Migrating Your Site to Centralized WordPress Hosting

Interested UGA colleges, units and departments may learn more about Centralized WordPress and what EITS offers by contacting Robert Ethier in EITS at rethier@uga.edu . The EITS Website Services team is available to learn about your unit’s needs and provide an overview of Centralized WordPress.

EITS Support

UGA colleges, units and departments using the EITS WordPress service provided through Kaptiv8 Marketing will be given a dedicated website to manage. Participating clients must name top-level administrators, who will have access to manage users within their department/unit. Top-level department/unit administrators must also receive additional WordPress training from EITS and adhere to appropriate policies.

EITS provides support for use of the WordPress interface and hosting of web pages created and maintained through the EITS WordPress service provided by Kaptiv8. EITS also offers training for new top-level administrators and users on an ongoing basis. However, EITS does not provide web site design, custom template modifications, or content creation services.

Colleges, units and departments interested in Centralized WordPress are encouraged to contact EITS for an overview and additional questions. Units interested in hosting websites using the EITS WordPress service and working with EITS website support are required to accept the Terms and Conditions for EITS Website Services, which can be provided upon request. 

Centralized WordPress Cost Structure

Please use the following information as a guide to determine the approximate costs for your site and what constitutes a “visit”.

• A single visit is one unique IP address logged per day (UTC).
  • Example: A single IP visiting a site multiple times in a single day would be logged as one visit, but a single IP visiting a site 3 times in one week on three separate days would be logged as 3 visits.
• Pages and other dynamic requests are counted as visits.
• Static assets such as images, css, js, and other files do not count as a visit, and are excluded.
• Known bot user agents and prefetched traffic are not counted as a visit.

Approved Plugins

EITS maintains a list of approved plugins that can be used to extend the capabilities of WordPress. If a client wishes to use a plugin that is not included in this list, the plugin must first undergo a security review and approval process. Please contact EITS for more information on using any unapproved plugins that are not represented in the list or to submit a plugin for review.

This list will be updated as plugins are added or removed.

• Advanced Custom Fields PRO
• Custom Post Type UI
• Disable Comments
• Gravity Forms
• Max Mega Menu + needed add-ons
• Page scroll to ID
• Search Exclude
• Simple Page Ordering
• Stream
• Superfly Menu
• The Events Calendar + The Events Calendar Pro
• Yoast SEO

Security

All newly developed or newly migrated websites must undergo security review by UGA’s Office of information Security (https://infosec.uga.edu) prior to a website launch event. In addition, EITS may determine that a security review is needed in the event of a major site update or addition.

EITS will be updating necessary security procedures, as required by Information Security to be performed on client websites, on this page.

Sample Centralized WordPress Websites

EITS will be updating a list of sample sites that are currently maintained via Centralized WordPress Hosting. In many case, these sites and their content will have been migrated from an existing content management system into WordPress by the users and administrators of those departments.

Templates and Training Resources

EITS is developing website templates to expedite the migration of content into the CMS. These templates will address accessibility concerns, feature responsive design, and adhere to UGA brand guidelines. These templates will be available for use by colleges, units, and departments using Centralized WordPress Hosting.

EITS is also developing corresponding training guides that address the creation of content and the use of features that are unique to each template. These guides will serve as a compliment to EITS led training and supervision of an Omni site setup.

Migration of Existing WordPress Websites Into Kaptiv8

Clients that are interested in migrating an existing WordPress website in total to this service, including content, plugins, and theme, will require an initial assessment by Kaptiv8 prior to onboarding. This assessment will be used to determine the feasibility of migration to the Kaptiv8-managed WPEngine hosted platform under their guidelines. Kaptiv8 will also determine if there are any additional development requirements and costs required to facilitate migration and provide support for the site as part of this process.

Qualifying sites may only employ the use of the classic editor and plugins must derive from the list of approved options provided by Kaptiv8 that appear on this page. Plugins that fall outside of this approved list may be removed or replaced as part of the migration process. Qualifying sites must also be submitted for security testing as part of the assessment process, and may be subject to additional subsequent security testing at intervals deemed necessary by Information Security.